Man from Mozilla attacks Chrome Frame

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 29 Sep 2009 at 17:15

Mozilla vice president Mike Shaver has criticised Google's Chrome Frame, claiming it makes many of Internet Explorer's features "less effective".

Launched last week, Chrome Frame is Google's rather cheeky attempt to usurp Internet Explorer by replacing its rendering engine with the WebKit engine that underpins Chrome.

Google claims the plug-in vastly improves the performance of Internet Explorer, especially older versions of Microsoft's dominant browser.

The man from Mozilla is not so sure, however. "Users who wish to render sites with Chrome can already use Chrome, of course, and should," Shaver writes on his blog.

"Running Chrome Frame within IE makes many of the browser application’s features non-functional, or less effective. These include private browsing mode or its other security controls, features like accelerators or add-ons that operate on the content area, or even accessibility support."

Website owners need to enter a line of code in their sites to trigger Chrome Frame. Shaver says "delegating" the decision to webmasters is a mistake and "hinders" people's understanding of browser security.

"It would be better for the web if developers who want to use the Chrome Frame snippet simply told users that their site worked better in Chrome, and instructed them on how to install it," Shaver claims.

"The user would be educated about the benefits of an alternate browser, would understand better the choice they were making, and the kudos for Chrome’s performance would accrue to Google rather than to Microsoft."